New research shows long-term personality traits influence problem-solving in zebra finches

Personality is not unique to humans. New research published in the Royal Society Open Science journal demonstrates that zebra finches have personalities, and some traits are consistent over two years of the birds' lives.

In addition to showing stable personality, zebra finches innovated solutions to novel foraging tasks, where sometimes success was related to personality type.

The article was written by Lisa Barrett and Jessica Marsh, of the University of Wyoming; Neeltje Boogert, of the University of Exeter; Christopher Templeton, of Pacific University Oregon; and Sarah Benson-Amram, of the University of British Columbia, formerly of UW and the leader of UW's Animal Behavior and Cognition Lab.

The authors of the paper tested 41 zebra finches at UW from 2016-18 to measure individual differences in the birds' behavior through time.

The authors measured a host of traits -- dominance, boldness, activity, risk-taking, aggressiveness and obstinacy -- in the short term (two weeks) and the long term (two years), using standardized personality tests that had been established in the literature.

To assess boldness, for example, the authors placed a novel object in an enclosure with a bird that had been feeding and measured how long it took the bird to resume feeding in the presence of the novel object. To assess dominance, the authors recorded interactions of groups of birds at a single feeder. The authors measured obstinacy -- or docility -- while handling the birds by counting the number of escape attempts the birds made beneath a net.

"We were interested to see if personality would remain stable or if individuals would be flexible in their behavior over time," says Barrett, the lead author. "Repeating our tests over two years with the exact same birds allowed us to answer that question."

Barrett and colleagues found that not all traits were equally consistent. Of the traits they measured, many traits were consistent over two weeks, but only boldness and obstinacy were consistent over two years.

Next, the researchers tested whether personality related to problem-solving success on three novel tasks previously used with zebra finches.

"Since individuals vary in their personality type and in their cognitive ability, we wanted to see if these two sources of variation were linked," says Marsh, who was an undergraduate at the time she worked on the study.

The authors found that problem-solving success related to boldness, dominance and obstinacy. For example, less dominant birds were more likely to solve two of the tasks compared to their more dominant counterparts. This result provides support for the "necessity drives innovation" hypothesis, which states that less dominant individuals -- who receive fewer resources due to competition with their flock mates -- may need to innovate new ways to access food.

"In this work, we leveraged a comprehensive suite of personality tests and multiple cognitive tasks, and we carried out our work over a longer period of time than traditional tests," Benson-Amram says. "This allowed us to uncover the importance of measuring multiple traits for understanding the link between personality and problem-solving."

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Certain personality traits associated with cognitive functioning late in life

People who are organized, with high levels of self-discipline, may be less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment as they age, while people who are moody or emotionally unstable are more likely to experience cognitive decline late in life, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

The research, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, focused on the role three of the so-called "Big Five" personality traits (conscientiousness, neuroticism and extraversion) play in cognitive functioning later in life.

"Personality traits reflect relatively enduring patterns of thinking and behaving, which may cumulatively affect engagement in healthy and unhealthy behaviors and thought patterns across the lifespan," said lead author Tomiko Yoneda, PhD, of the University of Victoria. "The accumulation of lifelong experiences may then contribute to susceptibility of particular diseases or disorders, such as mild cognitive impairment, or contribute to individual differences in the ability to withstand age-related neurological changes."

Individuals who score high in conscientiousness tend to be responsible, organized, hard-working and goal-directed. Those who score high on neuroticism have low emotional stability and have a tendency toward mood swings, anxiety, depression, self-doubt and other negative feelings. Extraverts draw energy from being around others and directing their energies toward people and the outside world. They tend to be enthusiastic, gregarious, talkative and assertive, according to Yoneda.

To better understand the relationship between personality traits and cognitive impairment later in life, researchers analyzed data from 1,954 participants in the Rush Memory and Aging Project, a longitudinal study of older adults living in the greater Chicago metropolitan region and northeastern Illinois. Participants without a formal diagnosis of dementia were recruited from retirement communities, church groups, and subsidized senior housing facilities beginning in 1997 and continuing to the present. Participants received a personality assessment and agreed to annual assessments of their cognitive abilities. The study included participants who had received at least two annual cognitive assessments or one assessment prior to death.

Participants who scored either high on conscientiousness or low in neuroticism were significantly less likely to progress from normal cognition to mild cognitive impairment over the course of the study.

"Scoring approximately six more points on a conscientiousness scale ranging 0 to 48 was associated with a 22% decreased risk of transitioning from normal cognitive functioning to mild cognitive impairment," said Yoneda. "Additionally, scoring approximately seven more points on a neuroticism scale of 0 to 48 was associated with a 12% increased risk of transition."

Researchers found no association between extraversion and ultimate development of mild cognitive impairment, but they did find that participants who scored high on extraversion -- along with those who scored either high on conscientiousness or low in neuroticism -- tended to maintain normal cognitive functioning longer than others.

For example, 80-year-old participants who were high in conscientiousness were estimated to live nearly two years longer without cognitive impairment compared with individuals who were low in conscientiousness. Participants high in extraversion were estimated to maintain healthy cognition for approximately a year longer. In contrast, high neuroticism was associated with at least one less year of healthy cognitive functioning, highlighting the harms associated with the long-term experience of perceived stress and emotional instability, according to Yoneda.

Additionally, individuals lower in neuroticism and higher in extraversion were more likely to recover to normal cognitive function after receiving a previous diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment, suggesting that these traits may be protective even after an individual starts to progress to dementia. In the case of extraversion, this finding may be indicative of the benefits of social interaction for improving cognitive outcomes, according to Yoneda.

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